and gained distinction in the army in the wars in the Low Countries.

Dramatic Career. At the age of nineteen, or thereabouts, Jonson entered fully upon the dramatic career, first as an actor, then as an assistant to other dramatists in the composition of plays, and finally as an original dramatist. In the early part of his dramatic career, he had a quarrel with a fellow-actor, Gabriel Spencer, and a duel ensued in which Spencer was killed. Jonson was imprisoned two years for his crime. He was famous indeed for his quarrels, and was seldom out of hot water.

First Work. Jonson's first original drama of note was the comedy of Every Man in His Humor. This was brought out some time between 1596 and 1598, when the author was from 23 to 25 years old. It gave him at once fame and money, and the hatred of his rivals.

Editions of his Works. - In 1616, Jonson published a collective edition in folio of nearly all his works to that time. He had made preparations before his death to give a revised edition of the works written after 1616, but death coming upon him suddenly, he failed to carry out the intention. There were frequent reprints after his death, but no scholarly and complete edition of his works was made until that put forth by Gifford, in 1816, in 9 vols. 8vo.

Principal Plays. The following are the titles of his principal Plays: Every Man in His Humor; Every Man out of His Humor; Cynthia's Revels; The Poetaster; Volpone, or The Fox; Epicone, or the Silent Woman; The Alchemist; Sejanus, His Fall, a Tragedy; Catiline, His Conspiracy, a Tragedy; and a large number of comedies, masques, and dramatic pieces of different kinds.

Peculiarities as an Author.-Jonson was accurately versed in the Greek and Latin classics, and insisted strongly on giving to the English drama the classic forms, and he was disposed to be intolerant and contemptuous of those writers who either were ignorant of Greek and Latin, or who for any reason disregarded the classic rules. He was a man of genius and wit, as well as scholarship, and he had among his contemporaries the familiar name of Rare Ben Jonson. The two tragedies which he wrote have high merit, but his Comedies are regarded as his best works. He received from King James a pension of one hundred marks a year for life.

Tavern Life. A part of the literary history of that day was the social festivities kept up by the dramatists at the taverns near the theatres. The Mermaid and The Apollo were famous places of resort of this kind. Among those who met in the keen encounter of wit were

Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Marlowe, and others equally known to fame. Good old Thomas Fuller thus speaks of Shakespeare and Jonson in these merry-meetings:

Many were the wit-combats betwixt him [Shakespeare] and Ben Jonson; which two I beheld, like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war. Master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in learning; solid, but slow in his performances. Shakespeare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention.” — - Fuller.

"Ben Jonson, a younger contemporary and rival of Shakespeare, who labored in the sweat of his brow, but with no great success, to expel the romantic drama from the English stage and to form it on the model of the ancients, gave it as his opinion that Shakespeare did not blot enough, and that, as he did not possess much schoollearning, he owed more to nature than to art. Jonson was a critical poet in the good and bad sense of the word. He endeavored to form an exact estimate of what he had on every occasion to perform: hence he succeeded best in that species of the drama which makes the principal demand on the understanding and with little call on the imagination and feeling the comedy of character. He introduced nothing into his works which critical dissection should not be able to extract again, as his confidence in it was such, that he conceived it exhausted every thing which pleases and charms us in poetry. He was not aware that, in the chemical retort of the critic, what is most valuable, the volatile, living spirit of a poem, evaporates. His pieces are in general deficient in soul, in that nameless something which never ceases to attract and enchant us even because it is indefinable. In the lyrical pieces, his masques, we feel the want of a certain mental music of imagery and intonation, which the most accurate observation of difficult measures cannot give. He is everywhere deficient in those excellencies which, unsought, flow from the poet's pen, and which no artist who purposely hunts for them can ever hope to find. We must not quarrel with him, however, for entertaining a high opinion of his own works, since whatever merits they have he owed, like acquired properties, altogether to himself. The production of them was attended with labor, and unfortunately it is also a labor to read them. They resemble solid and regular edifices, before which, however, the clumsy scaffolding still remains, to interrupt and prevent us from viewing the architecture with ease and receiving from it harmonious impressions. We have of Jonson two tragical attempts, and a number of comedies and masques.

"He could have risen to the dignity of the tragic tone: but for the pathetic he had not the smallest turn; so he incessantly preaches up the imitation of the ancients, (and he had, we cannot deny, a learned acquaintance with their works.) It is astonishing to observe how much his two tragedies differ, both in substance and form, from the Greek tragedy. After these attempts, Jonson took leave of the Tragic Muse, and in reality his talents were far better suited to Comedy, and that, too, merely the Comedy of Character. His characterization, however, is more marked with serious satire than playful ridicule; the latter Roman satirists, rather than the comic authors, were his models. In so far as plot is concerned, the greatest praise is merited by Volpone, The Alchemist, and Epicone, or the Silent Woman." - A. W. Schlegel.

Beaumont and Fletcher.

These two names have to be taken as indicating one poet rather than two, so intimate was their literary part

nership. A few facts, however, may be stated separately of each.

FRANCIS BEAUMONT, 1585-1615, though the younger of the two, began his literary career before Fletcher, publishing a translation from Ovid, and writing the Masque of The Inner Temple and Gray's Inn, and minor Poems. He died young, at the age of thirty.

JOHN FLETCHER, 1576-1625, though ten years older than his partner, was later in beginning authorship, and also survived him ten years. After the death of Beaumont, Fletcher brought out fourteen or fifteen plays, which are exclusively his own, except that in one of them he is said to have had assistance from Rowley. He wrote no undramatic pieces of any note.

Their Partnership. The literary partnership of Beaumont and Fletcher is one of the most curious things in literary history. Of good birth and high connections, and classically educated, at the ages respectively of twenty and thirty, in the year 1606, when the genius of Shakespeare was in its meridian splendor, and under the influence of its bewitching spell, these two young men, of kindred genius, were drawn together as joint laborers for ten consecutive years, during which they produced no less than thirty-seven or thirty-eight plays, which bear their joint name.

Their Rank and Character. - The dramas of Beaumont and Fletcher stand higher than those even of Ben Jonson, and, of all the dramatic writings of that day, come nearest to the magic circle which encloses Shakespeare. Their wonderful knowledge of stage effect doubtless helped their popularity. They catered also, to some extent, to the low taste of the age, by introducing licentious scenes and expressions which exclude their plays both from the stage and from the domestic circle at the present day. At the same time, they abound in striking beauties, both of thought and language, and the general tone of their works is of an elevating character.

"Beaumont and Fletcher want altogether that white heat of passion by which Shakespeare forces all things into life and poetry at a touch, often making a single brief utterance flash upon us a full though momentary view of a character which all that follows deepens and fixes, and makes the more like to actual seeing with the eyes and hearing with the ears. His was a deeper, higher, in every way more extended and capacious nature than theirs. They want his profound meditative philosophy as much as they do his living poetry. Neither have they avoided, nearly to the same degree that he has done, the degradation of their fine gold by the intermixture of baser metal."

Craik.

George Chapman, 1557-1634, is chiefly known as being the first English translator of Homer.

Chapman wrote very copiously also for the stage, and he enjoyed the friendship of the great dramatists of the day, Shakespeare and Jonson, as also that of Spenser. His plays have pretty nearly passed into oblivion.

Chapman's Homer still survives, and is even now in good repute, and is preferred by many to that of Pope. He translated the whole of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and likewise the Works and Days of Hesiod. His translation is in the fourteen-syllable rhyming couplet, and though having in places marks of negligence, is yet wonderful for the extent to which it preserves the fire and freedom of the original. It is counted as a beauty also that he has so successfully imitated the compound epithets of the Homeric verse, such as silver-footed, high-walled, fair-haired, strong-winged, music-footed, etc.

In his private character, Chapman is highly spoken of; he died at the ripe age of seventy-seven, his whole life having been a scene of content and prosperity.

times of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson.

Works. -Middleton's pieces, numbering about twenty, extend from 1602 to 1626. A complete critical edition of them has been edited by Alexander Dyce, in 5 vols. 8vo.

History.- - Little is known of Middleton's personal history. In his Game at Chess, he brought the King of Spain and his ambassador, Gondomar, on the stage, which caused a complaint and led to the players' being reprimanded before the Privy Council. In 1620, Middleton was made Chronologer, or city poet, of London, an office held afterwards by Ben Jonson.

Rank as a Dramatist. — Middleton holds a respectable rank in the second class of dramatists of this period. One of his plays, The Witch, contains such strong resem blances to the witch scenes in Macbeth, that it was until lately supposed that Shakespeare got some of his ideas from Middleton. But the results of the latest investigations point the other way. Some of his other most noted pieces are: Women Beware Women, A Trick to Catch the Old One, A Mad World My Masters, &c.

John Marston,

1634, was a dramatic writer and

satirist, who flourished from 1600 to 1634.

Marston wrote The Malcontent, Antonio and Mellida, The Insatiate Countess, What You Will, and other plays. He published also two volumes of miscellaneous poetry, translations, satires, &c.

One of Marston's pieces was ordered to be burned for its licentiousness. He was a rough, vigorous satirist, but was incapable of sympathy with any soft or gentle

emotion.

Thomas Decker, 1638, was a dramatist contemporary with Shakespeare, and associated with the other dramatic writers of that age.

Decker wrote twenty-eight plays, and a large number of tracts. His best known play is Fortunatus, or The Wishing Cap. His tract, The Gull's Horn Book, contains a curious picture of the manners and habits of the middle class in those days.

Quarrel with Jonson, — Decker supposed himself to be meant by the character of Crispinus, in Ben Jonson's play "The Poetaster," and took his revenge in the play of Satiro-Mastix, where Ben figures as Horace Junior. Jonson's supposed allusions to Decker's ill favored visage are thus paid back by the latter: "You staring Leviathan! look on the sweet visage of Horace: look, parboiled face: look - he has not his face puncht full of eyelet-holes, like the cover of a warming-pan!"

John Webster was a dramatist of celebrity contemporary with and succeeding Shakespeare, and associated with Decker, Rowley, and others.

Almost nothing is known concerning the particulars of the life of Webster. He is mentioned by Gerald Langbaine as having lived in the reign of James I., and also by Henslowe, in his Diary.

Works.-Webster wrote, in company with Thomas Decker, the plays The Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyat, Northward Ho, and Westward Ho; and, in company with Rowley, The Thracian Wonder. He also wrote, alone, The Devil's Lawcase, or When Women go to Law the Devil is full of Business, and Appius and Virginia, or The Roman Virgin, besides two minor poems. But his most famous plays are: The White Devil, or The Tragedy of Paulo Giordana Ursini and Vittoria Colombano, and The Tragedy of the Duchess of Malfy.

Rank. Webster is among the first, if not the very first, in the generation of dramatists succeeding Shakespeare. Indeed, the only fault that Hazlitt can find with Webster is that he imitates his great master too closely in style and conception.

Character as a Writer.-Webster belongs to the class of dramatists who aim at harrowing the feelings of the reader or spectator. The characters are sharply drawn, the action is vigorous, and the language is well adapted to delivery, but the subjects are in themselves so painful that it may be doubted whether Webster will ever again be a